I love the idea of a simple twist of fate, and it gave me nobody to be angry with. Yes, I was just a simple twist of faith. So no matter what God thrown at me, Yes, I had no one to sik about Debbie Gray.
We will never know whether you were one of the first solidamide victims in this country, but it remains a tantalizing possibility.
I think that's why God didn't give me arms. What God no, because I wouldn't have punch too many people out.
I'm Andrew Ruhle. This is Life in Crimes Today is a bonus episode. It's something different. Mostly on this podcast we talk about crimes. Today, we're going to talk more about a life. And my guest today is someone I've known nearly all my life. Her name is Debbie Gray, and Debbie and I were born at the same hospital in Bansdale in East Skippsland in nineteen fifty seven. I have to say it's rude to mentioned a lady's age, but Debbie was born a few months earlier than I was.
She was born I think in January and I was born in April. But our mothers were pregnant roughly the same time, and we think that our mothers shared the same doctor in Bensdale, a man called doctor Stan Reid, who later became a very prominent pediatrician, but in that era, in the late fifties, was a young doctor making his way in the world with his first appointment as a GP.
He was a young married fellow, lived in Bensale. He had a wife and a growing tribe of kids himself, which is interesting in itself for reasons that we shall see now. Debbie I first met, I think at school, and we didn't go to the same school at Lake Entrance. I went to Lake Tires School and Debbie went to
Lake Entrance. But every now and again we would do this thing where our school would take a little bust or whatever into like Sentrance, so that we kids from a tiny little place could go somewhere bigger, to the bustling metropolis of Lake Entrance. And that's where I met Debbie in early doors, probably grade three, grade four, grade five, And I remember it clearly because you wouldn't forget this sparky little person. She was about two or three foot
highf She's lucky. She was born with no arms and very short legs and She would sit on the back of the desk and write with her feet and do everything really well with her feet. She could pinch the other kids, she could use scissors. There was nothing she couldn't do. She had dark hair, shock of dark hair. She was tough, she was funny, she was bright, and obviously very different in some ways and very similar in others.
I never forgot Debbie Gray, and I had other reasons to remember her too, because my mother told me when I was a child, she said doctor Reed was a great one to hand out tablets and things, and in fact, he gave me some tablets when I was pregnant, and I think she's told me this story, and also my brother, who was born two years later. He gave me tablets and I didn't fancy them. I thought I'd rather just have morning sickness than take them, and I threw them out.
And it was her belief, rightly or wrongly, and she might have been wrong that doctor Reed also handed those sort of tablets out to other pregnant women, including quite possibly Debbie's late mother. Debbie Gray, we will never know whether you were one of the first thlidamide victims in this country, but it remains a tantalizing possibility, the problem being of course that thelidamide was not prescribed officially in
Australia until well after we were born. But what we don't know is whether a right using pediatrician, doctor Stan Reid, who later became a very famous pediatrician. He was one of the great baby doctor guys anywhere. He was one of the pioneers of ultrasounds, and he became quite famous and well known and a wonderful achiever and all that. But clearly he was making his way in those early days at a time when pharmaceuticals were not governed the
way they are now. It seems to me highly likely that someone like him would be in constant contact with world leaders in pharmaceutical stuff, and quite possibly might have gone to conferences overseas in the mid fifties to follow his interest in pediatric medicine, and as such he could have been the recipient of very early batches of samples of this new drug, which we call solidamide, but was actually marketed under many different brand names, you know, Distaval, contgen,
there were many breads names. The first, the Leiderminde baby known was born in West Germany in January nineteen fifty six, which is one year before U Debbie, And it means that that baby's mother took this drug. That baby's mother, I think worked at the factory run by the company Gunenthal, which made the drug, and the factory workers were given samples of the drugs very early. And it follows that some of the first victims of Ludamnde were the children
of people who worked for that company. It means that if this drug was being handed out to factory workers in fifty five, it seems to me quite conceivable, perhaps not likely, but conceivable that samples were being distributed unofficially through medical channels in nineteen fifty six in time for like doctor Reid to have some and to be hanging them out to your mother and to my mother and to various other people. Debbie Gray, Welcome to Life and Crimes.
Today is your life. The crime is the crime against humanity that was the Liddamite. We think you know, we know the Liddimbe was a crime. What we don't know is whether that's what happened with you and your mum or not. What do you think?
I think it's It has been a really tough life and I had wonderful parents and a really supportive brother in my little brother.
Jim, who you speak of very highly at all times. I can see you're almost tearing up. It's not many things make you tear.
Up, mate, not at all. But losing that young man was probably the tragedy. That's a crime, yeah, crime on humanity because I didn't realize I had a disability till he died. Really, you know, I just never I don't think the word ever ended my lips.
Tell me this. Your parents, like you know Lenny Roe's parents and others, they're not they're not unique, but they are in next to you. But they just took you on straight on. They ignored all suggestions made by professionals or wherever that you should go to your valor or somewhere and stay there forever. What were your what did your parents do?
This is our daughter, yep, and we're taking her home as simple as that.
What were your parents' names?
Cam, Cammi little Cami, who had the best smile. And Bimbo they called Ray Gray, Bimbo, Ray Gray.
So now your dad, he was here from a fishing family, fishing Lakes Entrance in those days. Of course, generations, big fishing town. And he later on drove trucks which were probably delivered.
Fish maybe no, no, totally out of the fishing industry altogether. And he brought truck and Carter timber Carter timber to now an hour, Yes, Puts timberyard, and he would cut from there to Crawdon Timberyard.
And did you used to go with him?
I used to be in that truck all the time. I'm very much Tomboyd attitude.
So you'd be in the truck in the jockey seat or on his knee or whatever, and driving down the road.
I suppose I'd start out in the in the passenger seat, but many times I ended up on his knee. Yeah, driving with my shoulders the wheel. You know, he didn't care. They were the days that and Dad always had a lot of faith in me because he had a lot of faith in me. You can do it? Yeah, good, you know you can do it?
Well? You could, you were marble.
He just he built my attitude up too, even if I physically thought I couldn't do it to begin with, I had the attitude to go, well, we'll sorted out.
So you were just a little girl. You were a little little girl, because you know, I was a little little girl. You were. You're not tall now, but you were.
You were because I just don't have femurs. Yeah, exactly, I have no femurs. So the tibia, the top of the tibia is not connected into the knee that would be at the bottom of your fema. Okay, that knee connection is now up at my hip. Oh, I've got you, yes, which is why I've.
Got the joints different.
The hip joints are different.
So here you are. You go often with your dad in the truck. Ye, you weren't always at school, clearly.
Up until five and before four I went to kinder.
You became well known to all the truckies at the truck stops. Absolutely, can you remember that?
No? I mean I remember missing around down at Crowdon, you know, at the yard and running around. Don't get run up by that truck, Debbie. You know. Yeah, they don't remember me a lot more than I remember them. It's you sad, because I do get approached a lot. Oh, Debbie, how are you going? And I look up at people, and now I'm older, I'm quite happy to go. Yeah,
but who the hell are you? You know? I'm sorry, but it might have been three years old back when you remember me, and because of our shape, you remember who I am. But you look like every other buggery out there.
You know that's true.
I'm sorry. Can you give me your name?
You know so you've mentioned your father. He always told you.
You can do it. You can do it, you can do it, you can get it in your head, you can do it. You can do it.
What a bed your mum?
My mum was very much the same, and she had the same attitude whatever. There was no pandering me. So one day we were down at nanon Pas having a visit, and Mom must have had a friend there beside her at the table and nanny's at the stove or whatever, and a friend and Mum told me this story. And the friend said to Mom, God, keimmy, god, kemmy. Debbie's climbing the tree. And Mom looked out and I'm climbing the lemon tree. I'm trying to get up on the first branch of the lemon tree. I mean it's only
three ft two foot off the ground. The second branch is probably three foot off the ground.
How did you do it?
Anyway? I got up there and Mom turned to her friend. No, she's all right, She'll only four. Once Mom said the friends George.
Just just dropped.
That was her attitude, you know, let her stuff up. She's gonna you know, she's going to have it. She needs to feel the pain because she won't stop otherwise. That was my attitude until I had to prove I could and do it anything, even if it ended up in a bit of pain.
Yeah, that's what you'd.
Just saying, No, deb you can't do that wasn't good enough.
I remember seeing that in that Little Girl at Lake sent France in the mid sixties, and you're sitting on the back of the desk fierce. You're showing off. Undoubtedly.
Also at that stage, I was supposed to be using my artificial arms, so I was actually supposed to be sitting in the seat, yes, and writing with my You weren't doing that when I know, So I probably jumped up on the back so I could get my feet over it, exactly. I probably did that. Yes, I can't, because through primary school I had the artificial arms. Yeah, that I hated profusely.
Yeah, I think you used to take them off.
Yeah, to read about it.
You were very bad because you would have them on if you wanted to hit someone.
I think that's why God didn't give me arms. God I didn't know because I would have punched too many people OUTI now.
So how was it at school that that school I remember visiting occasionally? What was it like?
Look, I got to say, ben So high school was just a great post for me to be.
So from Lake you went on the Arlie Armstrong's bus or your mates on the bus.
And then they would do the Nanna run. We always had to do then run. So we turn off at Nanguna there, go around that Nonguna road and come out on the Swan Reach road and then come back up. So we were the longest ride on the bus.
And because you had like sentrance kids that you've gone through, I was just carried you through school just as Rember anything new? Yeah, okay, which was you remember your school days as pretty good.
Times and a lot of my friends. Yeah, it wasn't to say that there wasn't the odd smarter.
If I may say, you can, I don't think we're going to get suited.
There was the odd smarter? Is it like to give me? You know?
Well?
I had one girl that didn't like the fact that I found her brother quite cute and takes me breath away when I think of how nasty she was, really, how horribly nasty she was. But I'd put up with the odd nasty person before the odd one because I really had a good group of people around me in the centrance and benstuff. But this chick, I got quite sweet on her brother on the bus and we were going to sit together until she demanded, you're not sitting
with a cripple. Yeah, right, And kind of that was the end of anything ever developing at high school in those years. Through that, she used to always get things. You know, you get a joke on the bus and you start passing it around or whatever, and she would just stand up. So don't show Debbie.
Is that right?
So they were afraid of her because she was a nasty pasty. They would never show me. And one night I had the best joke on a bit of paper and I passed it across the aisle. Don't show, oh beautiful. So she got up though, because she used to sit in the queen Bee seat up the back. She got up, shutted down the aisland, snatched it out of one of the girl's arms. Held it up in the air because I'm only three foot eight and I didn't have a reach. So she held it up in the air and said,
get it, you know, went back to her seat. She's sitting in the middle of the of the aisle, and I got out of my seat and thought, stuff this, I'm getting my joke back. So I went back up and right in front of her knees, and I was saying, you know, give a sip back, you get it. She's got her arms up in the air, She's got everything reaching up in the air as she's holding it upath like this, give it back. And she didn't give it back. So the artificial arm just went back and I came
in with a whack and it's metal. Oh it's a hook, one of those metal hooks, and smashed into a rib. I had enough. Bus driver just stopped and watched me finish her off. It just stopped and anyway, but I obviously caused some pain in the rib. I thought I'd broke it. I don't know to this day, but the thing is to punch her. I had to take my
whole body forward and punch. But as she collapsed forward on her knees, you know, she's jammed my head between her belly or her boobs and her thighs, right, because my face is down squashed into her thigh. Well, how was I going to get out of that?
I don't know.
Oh, okay, So I took a great hunk and.
Well she'll never forget you.
Well, no she didn't.
And so that was that. We stood out in your school days.
Oh mate, that was a yeah.
Now you you were well known around Gibson.
For sure, and I was treated well.
Yeah, you treated well. I mean, I know you were actually mating with a lot of the local rock bands, the guys in rock bands, musicians. You like music, and musicians liked you. You know, you'rhythm Debbie. You've got around to a lot of rock events and concerts and parties and all over the journey, and you've become quite familiar with a lot of people because, as you say, they
never forget you well for obvious reasons. Now, one of these old mates in the rock scene is Jimmy Barnes, and he's entourage and at one point you went to the green room after he'd performed here in Melbourne, Is that right?
What happened? I did? Well, you know, I'd been slightly intoxicated boogin drinking dance and drinking dancing, and it all ended and I wasn't ready to end. So I went over to the backstage doorway and I said, hey, come on, let me out. I can't. I'm not going to do any harm, you know, let me in. Let me in. And Jimmy must have been just back a bit over
and he turns around. He goes, hey, I've got this chick at the at the door out their bounds is saying, well, we let her in, and Jimmy just looked down and he looked at me, and he looked over and he goes, let her in. She looks armless, and he let me in.
Let you in. Shocking joke, but.
Jo great joke. Didn't mind, didn't care.
And they were all off their rains.
Oh absolutely, Mom and dad.
Mum and dad were there.
Mom and dad were there, and they just accepted anything that boy did. She loved him like and I talked to them for a little while. But the horrible thing, because I'm on young twenties and I'm standing in front of them, swaying all over the place. I'm not always like this. I didn't want me because they could see what boys and all that were doing. Yes, and I'm thinking I'm not going to do that in front of them.
No, you were respectable.
And I was trying to be fisherman's daughter. That's right. So you know, anyway, I tried to bluff them into the fact that I'm not always like this. I want Jimmy Barnes to write a song about me.
Well he might, now, so you get to be grown up. Your three foot eight which is a meter and a bit in the three foot eight and a half three eight and a half.
I used to.
Sprout like Peter Bakos, like he used to say that extra half inch means a lot when you've got to stand on a chair about your So you get to your twenties, you do the best you can. You said, Margaret, I'm going overseas. Yeah, is that right?
As quick as that? Because I went into a rehabilitation center from school. Yeah, we're at the one in Spring Road here, the motor accident one that is Oh, that's the first Commonwealth rehab center. It was a Conwealth rehab center that they brought up from Mount Martha used to be a rehab center down there. Well, they brought it up and brand new built purpose this building in Springvale Road, Okay, And it was a living so for country people. So I had accommodation at the back.
Yeah.
So at fifteen I got moved up there, I see, and lived there for seven months.
And did you at that stage, I still trying to equip you with artificial limbs and.
All boy friends escape one night over water.
You have a bit of help, Yeah, I had a bit of help. Goodness.
Yeah, one boy behind his hand up me, mum pushing out, the other one sitting up on the top of the fence and he's got hold of me neck. We got me out. I think I was going for a pregnancy test and I didn't want to tell him at the rehab.
Is that a fact? Well, I'm glad your mum's not either here.
That's so am. I I always said I was never printing the book until I didn't have mum and dad anymore. Fair enough, And I used to say it as a joke. But here we are.
Well. One of the reasons we're here, Debbie, is that you have written the book of your life, which.
She's called simple twist of fate.
A simple twist of fate and that is a line from.
A rock song, isn't it a line from Bob Dylan? Bob Dylan, that's title of his song. And I think if you listen to the song, the lyrics don't really fit in with my life. But I love the idea of a simple twist of fate and it gave me nobody to be angry with. Yes, I was just a simple twist of faith. So no matter what God thrown at me, yes, I had no one to sook about.
Yeah, so that's your take on your situation.
Well, that the attitude I grew up with.
You did, and you know, the courtesy of your parents really.
And your brother Jim. Yeah, they're both great.
That book has a cover, and the cover is an old black and white photograph. I've seen a lot of black and white photographs of my time, Debbie working in newspapers. It is one of the more striking pictures. Tell us how you came buy that picture and where it was taken.
When I was traveling the world on my own, what I had actually put a backpack on my back nineteen eighty five, gym was always around me. I wanted to give him a life because I felt people felt that I was a burden to him. So I needed to kind of prove the world that I didn't have Jim around me all the time because I was asking him
to be. He just wanted to be. So I bought a one way ticket around the world and ended up flying off to America, traveled around there for a while, got up to Canada, went back down to Mexico, went back to bottom California, San Francisco, jumped a Greyhound bus to New York diagonally straight across. And I don't know if I should extend on that trip, but that was a really good trip.
Well you could censor it a bit, but not too much.
Well, I smoked a lot of pot, did it on that trip because you.
Were a bit of a rock check Like check now, I've got to steer your back book cover And that photograph tell us about that that was.
Insane in San Francisco. And I have a girlfriend who disputes when that was taken, so we'll leave it in what she recalls, which was nineteen eighty eight. I came back to Australia and I wanted to take off again, so I took a girlfriend with me and we went. We bought a car. Eventually we just bought a car and lived in the car to travel around America. And then she had her grandmother die. She had to fly back home, and she suggests that's what happened because she
wasn't at that concert. I decided I wanted to go to this big blues concert that was underneath the San Francisco Bridge. Well, I believe I've got good rhythm with music, and when I'm dancing, I mean I'm with it. I'm in the moment, and he seemed to enjoy that.
Are we talking about Albert Collins?
We are talking about Albert Collins, one.
Of the great blues guitarists of all.
The time, absolutely and a beautiful person. Not that I really got to know him as a beautiful person, but he I bored me off the stage because I'm at the front, just under the rope, and I'm kind of just under that, and nobody's wanted to push me back because they knew I had to get up front just to even see something fair enough. So I was allowed to boogie there and on boog in, and next minute he just did this almighty leap off off the stage, and I thought he's going to land on me.
This guy, Just to put it in context, he was a black guitarist. He was a striking looking figure, a bit like Samuel L. Jackson, the Factor, and he was he was not as famous as Jimmy Hendrix, but his own in his own sphere.
He was in the blues world.
He was Jimmy Hendrix of Blood. He was a big deal. So he's jumped off the stage with.
His Yeah, got his guitar and he's in the.
Middle of a song and he's hitting the notes.
The next minute he does his fly through the air and I kind of stepped back because I thought he was going to land on me. Did he know I was there? I'm thinking, you know, like.
Even how did that go?
And of course, I mean the photo is him forehead to forehead, and that's what he did. He just came down.
So he starts, he gets right down next to you and starts.
Playing in front of me, and he's looking me straight in the face.
And while this is happening, someone in the crowd thinks this is a great photograph and takes it.
Takes a fabulous photo. She must have leaned over that white rope and taken it along sideways along to the left.
So somebody's taken a camera. This is an era when you know there's no camera phones. Cameras are big and heavy.
It's not digital. And I didn't have a camera.
Like either a professional or am a photographer. Was an amateur who had a camera.
There a camera she took a couple of quite a few didn't know she takes. And I had no idea, and I just thought, this is a moment that I'll remember for the rest of my life. And nobody's going to believe this. Nobody's going to believe I've had Albert Collins. And at one stage where forehead to forehead, he's sweat stripping on my face. Yes, okay, and we are booging. We are anyway, And I had a fabulous time.
And what happened next, well, we.
Went I finished the concert of and leaving the concert, it's only a gate, you've got to walk out, and I'm amongst the masses of people and I'm walking out of the farm gate and somebody tapped me on the shoulder and I looked up and it was a German. I think she was German. She said, I've just got some great photos of you. And I said, where and she said when Albert Collins jumped down at you, I said, oh god. She said, where can I send them? I said, mate,
I've left Australia for a year. I've just started.
I haven't got an address.
I haven't got an address. She said, well, where's your address at home? Said, well, in twelve months or so, I'm going to be back in Lake Entrance, and here is the address. And so I gave her that address where my dog was still living, so she could have got the mail. But anyway, when I finally got home.
A year later, what happened?
And then a year after that, so two years after the after the event, what happens. I go to my letter box and I pull out the letter and this letter from Germany, and there's these photos, black and white photos that she'd taken me.
I just stood there.
I think I sat down on my nature strip and just went no, crying magnificently. I remember that I remember getting those.
Letters such good pictures, and they're really.
Good pictures on one stage, in close to him, and then we're back of having a boogie. And then but the fact that that's the cover of your book and the cover of my book is where we I think we've connected forward to forehead and I had a single it top on which immediately shows there's no arm on the right side. Fair enough, and I thought it really shows the people with disabilities could be found anywhere.
Yeah. Good, it's very good.
So when I looked at that, I thought, I'm so pleased that was there, because I was always about showing wherever I tried, I wanted to show that people with disabilities didn't always need to be pampered.
Yeah, exactly, And you.
Were and we got out and loved life like the rest of them.
You were more the bull terrier, pup, the poodle I have.
Exactly. You were well known and I grew up with two brothers.
Well, that's right. So it's been a hard life. It's not easy tough.
I've arettend it's easy. Yeah you do, but if you don't do that, it becomes hard.
Yeah, you've you know, it's had ups and downs. But along the way, you've you had a daughter, Yes.
I have. I've got a beautiful da beautiful daughter. And we just got married, did she.
We've got hope for the future. There. How old is your daughter? Now?
Thirty two? She married another lady called Stacy. Yeah, who is. We're just coming to terms with each other. And I love her very much and she's more than welcome in my family.
Now.
I've got two daughters, and you know, life goes on. It was a lot like me.
Yeah, we have a.
Few longer heads here and there. She's half like a mother.
Like a mother. Yes, And what got you to the idea of right now? I know you and I have discussed you writing a book a long time ago, and you've You've done it, and.
You did taken me over thirty years.
To get around it. Well, truly put pen to paper.
I was still working for the Navy when I started that book. Tell us about I started, well, I started doing public speaking because the guy he rang me up one day when I was working for the Navy, He said, can you come down and talk to our students. So he had me down there to talk about disability and abilities. You know what we can do. It's in our head, you know, it's really in your head. And so he got me to come down and that started my circuit of schools talking to schools about ability.
When was that, roughly in the eighties. Tell us about working for the Navy.
I loved that it's my best. At the time, I didn't realize it was the job of a lifetime.
And how did it come about public service?
Because I couldn't get a job in the private sector. All the interviews I went to. Once I got to an interview, that was everything stopped after that, even locally, well, I was in Melbourne, I left local fift.
Yeah, right, so you stayed out at your stayed I was gone.
I was gone from Lakes. I was never going to get a job down there.
And you got a job in the public service, and then.
From the public service. First one was with the aircraft factory dead to Port, Melbourne. Yeah, but my I was on just a typist in a typing pool.
You could so you could type very ably with your feet thirty odd yeah, thirty yeah good, better than faster and more accurate than.
My average typist. Yeah yeah, I could do thirty three thirty four words a minute or so.
That's enough for a government job.
Yeah, that's right.
And you've held that job for a farewell.
I held it for a while. At some stage there. When I was eighteen, I moved back to sales, so I beat in Melbourne three years.
That's when the band goes new you.
It's it's when I got around Sale with I remember that pubs on Saturday night.
Yeah, mid seventies, mid seventies, so ye know, I.
Got to know people in Sale, A couple of them. I'm still good friends with, you know to this day. Yeah, even though work was really hard down there.
I think there was a band called Unchained. It was and I think how called unchained because one of them, I'm going to say, the lead guitarist or the singer had sadly been locked up in prison for a little while when they led him out, he's been unchained. Yeah. I suspect that they might have had a song about you.
Well I had I went back to Melbourne. They might have did it without.
Me, don't we They might have the dirty dogs.
Because I ended up getting myself a volunteers job at the Sale Hospital in the records department at medical records, and we were redoing all the medical records hither and I and then the government decided they'd give me a job and I got a job at cres Nit Factory. It's clothing factory. So I had to leave this really stimulating job with the Base hospital, even though I won being paid it was a job to me. I was there nine o'clock every morning. I didn't leave till Heather left.
And anyway, they pulled me out and said, no, you can't do there. We're sending you to work. And I had to go to work at Chris Knit Factory and in sale pulling threads, oh dear, just pulling threads off. When they knit the man's on, there's an extra thread and I had to pull the threads off. And I sat there with an ittle, actually disabled woman. It'll be very sweet and that's that's fine, but that was my you know a lot. I had to sit with her
and no conversation. I wasn't allowed to near a sewing machine and I've been sewing at home for years a knitting machine. Sorry, And I had to stay just pulling threads bits of cotton off. So anyway, I spacked the dummy from that and said to Mom and Dad, I'm going back to Melbourne.
Ah, did you so?
I did tell us about Jim, my little brother, come with me.
So Jim is a bit younger than you. Yes, tell us a bit about Jim and your how your brother, you know, he helped you and was your best matin Anyways.
The thing with Jim and I, we were like twins. We were like twins. I cared for him as he cared for me, And no matter how I tried to break away from him coming in to do dishes or whatever he do around my house to eating up because not all we didn't live together all the time, I'd live with other people. And it's the one stage I was living on my own and Jim was just there to make sure things were right. He'd wash the dishes. If I'd lift the dishes out and come and the
dishes aren't done, he washed the dishes. He'd sweep the floor anything. He never made my bed, which I have never had to deal with him, Jee when you could have made the bed too, You know, No, it wasn't like that, but he just really So the trip around the world was catalyst was Jim. He was having a lot of trouble with things, and it was I was
finding it very hard. So I abandoned him. Basically, I just support a ticket around the world, thinking if I'm not here and he can't get to me, he's got to find a life.
Right. Oh, that was a very noble thing. You left so that he wasn't welded to your side and felt that he had to stay there.
That was my idea. I didn't want to fly off around the world on my own. I was very scared. Yeah, I was, how are we You're only eighty five? What do we say, early twenties?
Yeah, you were just early twenties.
And Jeff was also having the same trouble, similar troubles, and there were things were happening that shouldn't have been And I thought, well, if I'm the catalyst of all this, time to go yep. So I told it one way.
When you came back and you worked the places you've just told us about, when did did your life with Jim sort of resume? Brother Jim?
Well, as it turns out, when I got back home from my one year gone, Gym wasn't far behind me, wasn't he. He'd actually flown out within a month of me leaving, really to do the same thing and catch up with me. And there are records to state then in actual factor during that year, at one stage we were three minutes apart a he Throw airport. Yeah, I flew out to Greece as he flew in from New York.
In that year, people found out had to believe never we know mobile phones. No, you didn't know.
You only had a postcard. They could have taken how long to get through stards never come back to me because I was always on the move. I just, you know, could disposed guard to the frosts to say I'm not dead yet, you know exactly, unless to say I've made it here and there.
And somewhere else.
And they just trusted me, and you.
Got home and then he got home. And wait, when when did you lose Jim?
God, No, it's terrible to think I'm thinking about this, but it was nineteen ninety.
Five, so he died pretty young.
He's been dead thirty two. Emma's now thirty two and he died when she was two and.
A half, so he died pretty young.
So everybody's going to have to do their own.
Yeah, but obviously he was only thirty, she.
Was two and a half. He was like surrogate dad. I've got some good photos of them. She was a lot younger. Sadly she doesn't really remember him today, but he was like surroy good dad.
So looking back at your parents, him as that killing and yeah, and Jim.
And my bigger brother Jeff, Jeff, Jeff.
Yeah, no, I didn't know he was.
Four years older than me.
They all did a good job.
And so my teenager and my brother Jeff taking me to serve club dancers and things like that, and I had a ball for the day diying. I idolized him. But the will the family doesn't see it that way.
With the book, the.
Family, the family, the family is all dead. Now, yeah, you are the fan, the last man standing. I asked somebody about it. Why do you think that, he says, because nobody's got an internal fortitude like you.
Yeah, okay, And also you might have stayed. You smoked a bit of but probably not a lot of tobacco.
Oh no, full the backer smoker, Oh you were. Oh god, My mum and dad were smokers. We all smoked.
Oh fair enough, we all smoked.
You remember his children sitting in the car going down in Melbourne to fit for artificial arms, and we threw her in the back going can we wind the windows? That will be finished soon, you know? And so we all ended up smokers. In my teenagehood, I got led a little bit further.
Oh right, I can, Debbie. You've spent a lot of years writing the book, I made another, and then at some point I think you've reached out and got some professional help.
From thirty year for thirty odd year, well thirty years now, but tell us about it, well, twenty years. I just plodded along with it with the book. Yeah, just twenty odd years, typing away each night and thinking about, you know, where my life had been and how I'd done it. And people kept asking me, oh god, how did you do that? And how did you do this? And then someone else said you should write a book. And I was about twenty four to twenty.
Five when you start, yeah, okayah.
I was about twenty four to twenty five. They said he should write a book. I thought, oh, that'd be a good idea. Stop me answering these stupid questions, right, you know? So I started writing about what I did where I did. I had to feel a bit guilty because by then I had a bit of pipe. So really I wanted to write an honest book though, and why was I doing this? And I was trying to
fit in everywhere I went. I wanted to show that I was cool, I was all right, I wasn't a cripple that needed nurse mating so I joined a lot of different crowds to show that I had that tenacity.
You've sat on the back of the odd motorbike.
I've done that on the numerous occasions, numerous Gonna be a good seat, though, I don't like the new seats where you sit in.
The big Harley system.
No. I liked that. I really used to like the hond of gold Wings. I see love the Honda gold Wings. I really know.
And is that Is there a bit of that in the book?
I don't know where there is. I think I spoke of the men that I really kind of desperately wanted to have a partnership with for some reason. They all rode bikes. But I think I wrote about a couple.
Your book came as it covers a lot of ground. So you're going to have published several hundred copies and then as the demand grows, you'll publish more.
Well, I'm hoping, Britman, I need a little bit of money at the moment. Certainly didn't help me, you know, no, it didn't.
That's the thing, isn't it. We have a situation here where where a lot of people that you know, some of them because they've born a couple of years after you two, three, four years after you, so well looked after they got a big payout that was negotiated in part by Peter Gordon, now of Gordon Legal, who have persuaded, really persuaded is the term the English firm Distillers Limited or Diagio, which is the parent company to hand over tens of millions of dollars YEP to victims in Australia
who before that it only had very small payouts. But sadly you and a handful of other people never made the cuts. It's quite a striking fact and it does make you wonder whether, to return to our previous point, whether the ldamite was got to Australia through back channels in nineteen fifty six, and if no, no in nineteen fifty six, because you were born in nineteen fifty.
Seven, it had to be in the first.
So it would seem to be a possibility, but one that's probably unprovable at this distance, unless someone somewhere can uncover some documents or a diary or some that that's where somebody's recorded handing them to so and so and so and so and so. These are questions that could be put to several people, but one of them might be the surviving sons and daughters of doctor Stan Reid, if they possibly have their father's diaries. It's a very faint chance, but one, and I'll look into Thank you,
Debbie Gray. You've told us about your life story. You've done your book a simple twist of fate. You won't see thousands of them, you'll see dozens of them out in the marketplace. And it has a striking cover photograph of you and Albert Collins, the late great blues guitarist. Thank you, Debbie Gray.
It's been my pleasure, and I really want people to know that I didn't do this book as a grandiose look at me. It was a book to make people think about disability, yep, and the way they perceive what you can do. Oh, she's got no arms. She won't be able to do this or that and that. And I really want to show the world that don't be locked into what you think you do with your arms. If they're gone, you're not going to be able to
do it, you know. Like, so that's what I was out in the world trying to do.
You've always done it since you were three years old.
Maybe I've been successful in something.
Now you have, Yeah, no doubt.
My daughter is definitely my greatest success.
Good it's good on you.
Thanks WI great, Thank you, Andrew.
Thanks for listening. Life and Crimes is a Sunday Herald Sun production for true crime Australia. Our producer is Johnty Burton. For my columns, features and more, go to Heroldsun dot com dot au forward slash Andrew rule one word. For advertising inquiries, go to news podcasts sold at news dot com dot au. That is all one word news podcast's sold. And if you want further information about this episode, links are in the description.