PART 2 - The serious Issues of Mental Health... the scars that no one can see....

Cont…..

One of the first things i noticed about Wayne was that he regretted losing his boat upholstery business, the cars he had owned and having to give money to his ex partner.

It took him years to become a financial success, but now that he had lost that success, he wanted it back.. and quickly. He wasnt prepared to work the hours he once did.. and if it meant doing something illegal then he was prepared to do that. In the 1980’s there were big boat companies starting out at Coomera, Hope Island and Runaway Bay. Wayne now only did Upholstery for these big boat companies and basically worked his own hours.

Our relationship progressed quickly. Within a year he had moved into my Surfers Paradise unit and i was pregnant.. this made the urgency to have more money even greater. He dabbled in buying pot.. buying small amounts and selling them as sticks .. but that didnt seem to make much money. His brain worked over time trying to find a get rich quick business. We bought a wet suit shop at Fishermans wharf and added surf wear to it and it thrived. Wayne made and measured up customers who wanted a customized wet suit while i tendered to the sales register.. we made alot of money whilst we had that business as we purchased it in the Spring, upgraded all the stock and as soon as the warmer weather started to approach, it just thrived.. the majority of our sales were cash, so on a daily basis i would take the cash home to bank the following day. And the busier we got, the more cash i would take home..

My mother was still living in Victoria, and came up to visit us the christmas of 1989.. I was due to give birth in Feb of 1990. It was really really hot and our unit did not have air conditioning... the bigger i got, combined with the heat, I started to retain alot of fluid... We had been so busy at the shop... but it was now time for me to rest, prior to giving birth... I remember it being new year eve and I felt like a balloon... I would of been quiet happy to stay home, but with Mum being up here, i made the effort to go out with both of our families..We all met up at our unit and walked in to Surfers... I had an 8 seater glass table in the unit, and one end was dedicated to me doing all of our book work... and where I would just leave the bag of cash... Our spare room had been turned into a nursery... and as we were all going to walk out the door.. Wayne suddenly turned back... grabbed the bag of money and hid it inbetween my nappies I had in this so called nappy stacker.. we were on the second floor... the only way to enter the units was either through your own key or you could be let in through an internal intercom. When we arrived home early the next morning... we had been broken into.... Someone was looking for our shop takings.. someone knew that we kept the cash at home.... this was my first encounter with what money can do to people and just how far they will go to get it... we both knew, it had to be someone we knew... that we were close enough to, to tell them that we would be out that night... I was young... so was Wayne... and people were jealous... We never did find out who it was.. but they went through the place trying to find it... but luckily, they never did...

As Autumn and Winter started to approach, the shop died... I could no longer help there as i had a new born baby... so we decided to sell it... we were lucky enough to sell it to a guy Wayne knew... he changed it to a wetsuit shop only .... With left over neoprene, from the wetsuits, we started making wetsuit stubby coolers.. we took that side of it with us when we sold the shop and continued with that business and made passive income from it... but with Wayne no longer working long hours at the shop.. he started plotting again on how to make money... quickly....

In Jan of 1990, Wayne told me that he had a new supplier of marijuana, and he could buy a huge amount from them, bring it home, sell it in smaller quantities and make better money.. And this was a really big thing for him to do... I remember us both being really nervous about it all ... it was a four hour drive to go get it and we had to figure out how to bring it back... or basically, how and where were we going to put it or hide it i should say, in the car in case we were pulled over by the police... Im not going to mention the place we went to buy it, but it was out in the boonies.. the last hour and a half was all dirt road... I remember going the first time with him while i was heavily pregnant, but the bumby dirt road made me sick... so the following 2 times... I stayed in a motel in the nearest town to that dirt road.. and just waited for Wayne to return... no mobile phones in those days... i just had to hope that everything went well...

Driving the four hours to get there was one thing... but driving back with the extra baggage was very very stressful and scary... The couple that Wayne were buying it from were lovely... they were living 100% off grid in a tiny little home... candles and all... and to this day.. i have no idea who told him about this couple etc etc... Wayne had lots of ideas as to where to stash the pot, some good and some not so good... It was all too stressful to me so once i had my daughter i no longer did the drive with Wayne... Im not sure exactly how long this arrangement went on for... but id say at least 12 - 18 months... And he w0uld be gone for 24 hours at least, which would worry the hell out of me... no mobile phones back then.. these people lived off grid, they didnt have power, let alone a phone... Once he started to come out the boonies and go through towns... if he could find a pay phone, he would give me a call to let me know that he was okay...

By the time our daughter was 10 months old, we decided to sell the unit i owned and buy a house together... I have no idea if Wayne made alot of money or not from selling the pot... and we were no way rich, but we werent struggling either... When the unit sold and the mortgage was paid, what was left, my sister and i went halves in it..With the money I had, and what Wayne had, was enough for us to put a deposit on a house and mortgage the rest..we bought a house in Broadbeach waters, on the canal... and we went way over budget... the house was basic, 3 bedrooms, one bathroom... but it did have a pool and a big garage/workshop where Wayne could work... it was big enough for him to do Upholstery in and make our stubby coolers...Little did I know that it was here that I was about to experience something that would change me forever... We had lived there for about a month when my daughter got her first cold... she kept waking up in the night with a blocked nose... or a runny nose... and I remember it was a saturday morning around 5am when she had woken up again.. i took her down stairs with me and was getting her bottle ready when there a knock at the door... and this wasnt just a knock... there was a sense of urgency in this knock... I open the door.. the flyscreen door was shut.. and there were two men in suits there... they told me their names, told me they were from Broadbeach police, flashed a badge at me very quickly and asked to come inside .. So i let them in... Once inside they totally changed.. they started looking through cupboards, pulling out draws, they had put gloves on... they kept telling me to give them the money... i was saying what money... they finally went up to the bedroom where Wayne was sleeping, I could hear them give him a flogging... I didnt know what to do... i was totally confused... they came down the stairs, told me that they were calling the dog squad and would be back... I ran up to Wayne... he told me they took the money... im like what, the cops took your money... and Wayne says, they werent cops Shelley... they bluffed there way inside, with fake badges and came here to steal my money.... I was in shock... what the hell.... how could this happen... who the hell were these people.... how did they even know we had money... I was young and nieve.. I seriously had no idea of the people who were jealous of us... When your selling pot and making money from it, then your setting yourself up to be robbed... and like i said, we were no way rich. I was still driving the same car.. rusted by now, no air con... but.. we were better off than most of our friends the same age.. What happened that morning scared me to death. I had a baby... I became frightened... And from that day on wards.. to this current day... I never ever open the door when someone knocks on it... UNLESS I know who it will be... My kids grew up knowing that you never ever just answer the door because someone has knocked on it... EVER...

We didnt even own the house for 12 months when we decided to sell it.. My father had broken up with his second wife and was struggling to cope... he had bought a property in Canungra, bought an old Queenslander from Warrick and had the house moved on to the Canungra property, it was meant to be something that him and his wife would enjoy restoring, instead she left with a stack of cash and Dad was left to restore the property... and she had walked out on her two young boys, which Dad now had full time custody of... dad was in his late 50's and wasnt coping with it all... to top it off, she had run off with the local real estate agent... So he was a very hurt and angry man... But Dad hated being alone... He was staying at our place in Broadbeach waters, with the boys at least twice a week... Him and Wayne really connected and i loved there relationship... With running our business's in our garage, it meant that Waynes boat had to be outside... He wanted to repaint it and Dad convinced him to do it up in the huge sheds he had out at Canungra... Wayne agreed.. My sister was pregnant at the time and I said i would ride her horse for her until she was able to ride again... so while Wayne was working on his boat.. I would be off riding the horse... I loved it out at Canungra.. as a child, we lived at Torquay with mum, and Dad had a farm in Clarkfield, so one weekend was the beach and the next was the farm. I had a horse at 8 years old, was riding motor bikes by 9... I loved it.. I had such a great child hood... And even though I loved Torquay... I was a farm girl... and still am.... Eventually my father convinced Wayne to make one of the sheds a livable house and me, him and my daughter could live there... RENT FREE... Wayne was starting to love it out there too... When he would have a break from working on the boat, I started to try to get him on the horse.. he was no way interested at first. but as the weeks went by.. i finally got him to get on the horse.. and he never looked back, he loved it... and he became addicted to riding... with his now new love of horse riding... and 300 hundred acres of land surrounding us.. with a gorgeous flowing creek... we agreed... It took Wayne a month to have the shed converted to a house.. we had a smallish two bedroom place that i loved.. and Dad was our closest neighbour... Little did i know... that Dad and Wayne were plotting... They were both Pisces men... and they both had lost alot of money.. With the end of Dads second marriage and the huge interest rates.. The price of properties dropped... Something that Dad may have bought for $300,000 he could now only get $150.000. He had retired.. no longer had his gold digging second wife.. who basically left him when his millions were dwindeling... He also wanted a get rich quick scheme.. so they plotted together... and they continued to plot together right up until Wayne died...The day Wayne caught that late afternoon flight from the Gold Coast to Melbourne, he had no idea that he would return home in a body bag... but guess who was on that flight with him... Dad.. Dad flew down to Melbourne with him..

With the land and the privacy we had at Canungra, they both decided to try their hand at growing cannibis...Poor Wayne, he had such bad luck when he tried to grow it.... So lets fast forward a bit... by this stage, im pregnant with our second child... Dad, who hired a cleaning lady to help him with the boys... cleaning, some cooking, laundry etc... was now in a relationship with her... and her and her three kids had moved in with him... When the second wife left, Dad was a mess, he was taking valium and whatever else... the cleaning lady noticed it and she said... Col, why are you taking all of those pills... if you need to chill then you need a smoke... so at 59, my father started smoking pot... and the both of them would get off their heads every day... the place was a mess.. they were both drinking and smoking and at times i couldnt even get a decent conversation out of Dad because he would be laughing his head off most of time... but they were going to bed and leaving the pot on the table.. and it wasnt long before the older boys started stealing it and smoking it... So the pot that Wayne was growing... started to get thinned out... Dad was going to the hiding spot and stealing some of it.. his oldest boy followed him and then he started cutting bits off it... Wayne didnt touch it... hated it.. And it was Wayne that had put in the hard work to grow it.. Dad just wanted a percentage of it cause he was growing it on his property... Wayne started to get really pissed off... and one night he said to me... Its your Dad and Carolyn that are stealing it... and i went off.. I stuck by my father and said no way would he do that and that wayne was wrong... Well he wasnt wrong and the dynamics then started to change... Dad had subdivided a large area of land at the front of the property into 3 five acre blocks.. So we bought one from him.. Now Wayne didnt have involve Dad and he would now grow it on his own.. the land had barely a tree on it and there was no way you could hide a dozen marijuana plants on there... so he bought a container and buried it.. he built a small horse feeding station on top it and when he took the fed over to give to the horses, he would slip down the hole and into the container...he went down there every second night and would stay down there till morning.. he had a huge hydroponics set up down there... So most nights during my second pregnancy i was basically alone... I never ever went down there... ever... Waynes father owned big bull dozers... he organised for his father to come out to the property in the evening... he gave Dad some money and told him to take Carolyn and the kids into town for dinner and not to come home till around 9pm... As soon as it got dark, his father started digging the hole and within a few hours you could no longer see the container... we thought it was a great idea... It was years and years later... that I found out that most of Canungra knew what had gone down... but never said a word...

To be honest, i cant remember how successful this adventure was, but it couldnt of been that great because i do remember that when we moved out of the shouse (shed house) and moved to Coomera, that we also took alot of plants with us, that were in pots... Wayne didnt have much luck at Coomera either ... it was a five acre block we were renting, with a house and a shed that Wayne could work from... it was ideal as it worked out cheaper per week than renting a house and a separate work shop... 2 acres of it was cleared with gardens and lawn and the rest was just bush... I remember him telling me that someone had found his plants and had taken some cuttings from them... he was obsessed with finding out who it was and set up a camera system around them... and it was nothing like these days... he use to come to bed with a small tv kind of thing on his bedside table and he would be rolling up a heap of electrical cable that went from the plants to our bedroom... he also set up some kind of mat that triggered a siren if it was stepped on... plus a few booby traps... I think that lot ended up being successful... alot of it was kept away from me... I was busy with 2 kids so that suited me... I dont know where he dried it all or the ins and outs of it all... but i do know... that the more money he made, the more he wanted.. As long as Wayne still worked and to continued to do the Boat Upholstery and the stubby coolers... I was happy with that... He had a small group of people that he sold it to and didnt go out of the circle... If we did have alot of money from the proceeds of selling the pot... I didnt know about it...

In 1994, Wayne came home on day telling about this run down property/house he had seen in Upper Coomera for sale... Wayne had proposed to me about 6 months earlier and we were getting ready to be married... all paid for by us... We were just about to book a well deserved honeymoon when Wayne became fixated on buying this house... When i saw it, i couldnt believe my eyes... it was pitiful... too close to the road etc etc... We had $20,000 in the bank, from the proceeds of the house we sold in Broadbeach waters... we only had that property for 12 months and made around $40,000 profit from it when it sold... I both upgraded our vehicles and had kept the $20,000 in our savings account.. some of this was to pay for our honeymoon... Instead, it went on the deposit for the property... Wayne had big ideas regarding renovating it.. which i just could not see.. Fast forward 12 months and by the june of 1994 we moved in... We had no tiles or carpet... but we were in there ... that was the main thing... paying the mortgage, and for the renovations and renting another property while this was going on, was getting way too expensive for us... This house was the first time that we had something nice... it was big, it had air conditioning and later on down the track we put a pool in as well... By 1999 it was almost finished... The block was just under an acre and Wayne landscaped the whole lot which i personally didnt want him to do... Upper Coomera at the time, was all country and he was building a home that should of been at Sorrento... He did make a flying fox for the kids, which was fun... anything i suggested was never done... it was all about what he wanted and i just had to go with it... I liked the house and the property.. but i wasnt in love with it... if you know what i mean.... The past 5 - 6 years had been crazy... Wayne was still doing uphostery but hated it... he still grew cannibis but i have no idea where... but he started to delve into bigger things....

TO BE CONTINUED