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Mind Over Matter

Thursday, 1 Apr 2010

Words by Sarah Johnson

 

Many would say Frank Lampard attended the school of hard knocks during his childhood. Yet a positive mindset helped him thrive against the odds and emerge a resilient and commanding role model with a swag of accolades to his name.

According to Frank Lampard adversity is in the eye of the beholder. A situation is only a hardship if that's how you view it; and Frank never does.

Frank Lampard is an Aboriginal Australian, a descendent of both the Ngarrindjeri and Kaurna people, whose childhood was pot marked with misfortune. He started life in a ramshackle shelter on an Aboriginal mission; saw the breakdown of his parent's relationship; was hospitalised for 9 months with a severe illness; placed in a boy's home where his brother was sexually abused; and then steadily shuffled between various foster families until he reached adulthood.

Remarkably, Frank says the words that epitomise his childhood are “fun” and “success”.

Frank's story begins in 1946 at Point McLeay, an Aboriginal mission located near South Australia's Lake Alexandrina. Frank lived with his parents, Henry and Evelyn Lampard and a growing family that eventually tallied 11 children. “My dear old Mum appeared to be pregnant every 12 to 18 months,” recalls Frank. Their home, known as a 'four-poster', was simply four posts wrapped in Hessian, with a roof made of some galvanised iron but mostly tree branches, all held upright by strategically placed rocks.

This conjures up an image of third world conditions, yet Frank's memories of the mission are of “the most amazing little community that was self-sustaining in many ways.” As Frank says, “I had very fond recollections of life activities on the mission, where everybody seemed to have some sort of role.”  Within the Lampard family, Evelyn was in charge of housekeeping and childrearing, while Henry “always seemed to be off at work.” For pre-schooler Frank, who already displayed a sense of optimism that would bode him well: “Mission life, as much as I can remember, was a lot of fun.”

When Frank was 4 or 5 years of age, his hard-working, roustabout dad decided to relocate the Lampard family to Mulpata, a railway site at least 100 kilometres from the mission. The railway job was part of a government package, that included a cheap rental property and for Henry Lampard, it was a chance to provide a home for his family and a mainstream education for his children. However for Evelyn, moving away from the safety of the tight-knit mission community was unsettling, a situation that was compounded by the infant death of her fifth child, Trevor John. While still too young to fully understand his parent's troubles, Frank's resilient nature shone through. “For me, moving to that railway site and going to Lameroo Area School was all just life. I just got on with it.” 

Less than a handful of years after moving to Mulpata, Henry announced that the family was once again on the move, this time to Yurgo, another railway site in a new district. It was in Yurgo that things went horribly wrong.  “My mother started drinking quite a bit and joined my Dad in drinking sessions that sometimes would last hours on end, if not into days,” recalls Frank. “It was quite a miserable time for all of us in many ways because I noticed the worst come out of my dad, where he reached a point of drunkenness and became abusive, aggressive and threatening. My Mum was only a very small woman.”

It was also during this period that Frank suffered a debilitating illness. At 12 years of age, Frank was holidaying with his Grandfather, when one morning he couldn't get out of bed. He had been horse riding the day before and yet just the next morning he simply couldn't move. Rushed to the Women's and Children's Hospital in Adelaide, Frank was diagnosed with rheumatic fever, a severe inflammatory disease, and hospitalised for the next nine months. “For most of that time I could hardly feel anything, I certainly couldn't get out of bed, I couldn't talk,” said Frank. He spent three months in rehabilitation, learning to crawl, then walk and talk once again. He was told he wouldn't be able to play sport and that heart complications were likely.

Back at Yurgo, Henry and Evelyn had decided to separate. The family disintegrated and Frank and his two brothers, Laurence and Rex, were placed in a boy's home, known as Kurrbingya. However, their time at the home was short-lived, as Laurence and two other boys were sexually abused. Kurrbingya was shut down and the Lampard boys were again displaced; fostered out to their Dad's cousin, Myrtle Evans, in the Adelaide Hills. Aunty Myrtle, as she was known to the children was already caring for two of Frank's sisters and after two years, when she decided to move away from the Adelaide Hills, she only took the girls with her.

The next stop for Frank was at the home of the Warburton family, where he “had a pretty reasonable time” for a couple of years, before a clash of personalities with the Warburton's son forced Frank on, this time to the home of Mary Trevorrow, another of his Dad's relations.

Despite the constant upheaval, Frank had a positive outlook. “If somebody rejected us, we would realise that somebody else liked us, so it didn't matter much,” he says. Remarkably, at the time, Frank excelled at school and in sport. “For me, life was full of so much fun and success.” At his high school, Frank was head prefect, chair of the student representative council and captain of the football team, cricket team, school house team and inter-school athletics team. And at 17, he was named the youngest winner of the Mail Medal, a prestigious award in the local football competition.

There was also someone firmly on his side. In year nine, Frank was set to leave school to take up an apprenticeship at his cousin's fibre plastering business. That is, until his school principal, Mr. Ernie Wilson found out. “I'd done everything required to sign off from school, when Mr Wilson got wind of it,” says Frank. “He wrote this amazing letter to Aunty Myrtle, saying I had intellectual potential and more to offer the world than as a tradie.” It was enough to convince Aunty Myrtle and so Frank stayed on at school. “Mr. Wilson took an interest in me almost personally and would regularly call me in to remind me to knuckle down. He almost became a father figure.” When Frank won a scholarship to attend teacher's college, Mr. Wilson presented him with a voucher for 300 pounds to spend on stationery and reference books. “He was a beautiful person to say the least,” says Frank.

The remainder of Frank's story could fill a book, but in short, he went on to gain his teacher's certificate, was conscripted to national service for two years in an administrative role and then worked as an educator for 22 years before progressing to senior management levels within the public sector. He has maintained a strong focus and passion for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander affairs throughout his career and in his extensive community involvement. In recognition of his contribution to the Aboriginal community, he has received a long list of awards, including one of Australia's most prestigious accolades, the Medal of the Order of Australia in 2008. Last year he was named the national NAIDOC Aboriginal Elder of the Year.

Frank is a compelling role model, not only to the Aboriginal community, but to anyone facing life's difficulties. Frank shows that overcoming adversity often boils down to the way you perceive it. “Adversity has never, never entered my mind. I've had this ability to draw into myself, to think: this is not impossible; I can overcome this; I can get on top of this; I can get around this.” 

 

 

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