The power of love

Love stories from my life

This is an edited version of talk given at the Better Together conference, on the lands of the Kaurna people in Adelaide 17 February 2023. I pay my respects to Kaurna people particularly elders past and present, and to all First Nations peoples. I thank the Kaurna people and all of our First Peoples for their love for country and culture, and honour their determination to protect country and culture. I  commit to working side by side with them for sovereignty for these stolen lands, for justice, and for treaty.

I am a middle child, the third of five. I grew up in multiculturally diverse Altona in Naarm/ Melbourne. My mother was a teacher, my father an engineer. There was not a lot to go round,  hand me downs were standard but there was food on the table every meal, even if sometimes dessert saw us sharing a punnet of strawberries amongst the seven of us.

Above all I was loved. I had no doubt I was loved. This was despite Mum and Dad always being busy with work, family, community and church. Mum sometimes would forget to pick my sister and I up from Little Athletics at lunchtime Saturday leaving us to walk home. Dad was a typical emotionally distant father of his generation, busy in the garage and with his ham radio shack but there when he needed to be.

Life was secure. I was encouraged to be creative and follow my dreams.  I believed in myself, and my memories of my childhood are happy ones. The power of love. 

I got through my teenage years; the ‘I’m too fat, why are my friends not talking to me anymore, ‘why haven’t I got a boyfriend,’ years drawing on this reservoir of love. 

Heteronormativity meant that I was heterosexual.  I didn’t go through any teenage angst or worry about my sexuality, didn’t have any guilt or shame about who I really was. I believed in myself, and had no doubt that at some stage I would fall in love. Which I did!  I met Penny, and knew early on that she was the one. She was identifying as male then. 

I remember two months into our relationship walking along the beach at Norman Bay, Yiruk - Wamoon/ Wilson’s Promontory hand in hand and thinking how much I loved her. We married, had kids, lived and loved happy busy lives. 

We had purpose in our individual lives, we negotiated everything and made decisions together, we challenged each other's mindsets, and were flexible and accepting when things didn’t go to plan. 

We both loved being in and connecting with the natural world, inspired and fulfilled by bushwalking in the Victorian Alps, including the awesome and exhausting walk up the North West Spur of Mt Feathertop, icicles glistening on the snow gums as we trudged through snow on winter trips; walking along wind swept beaches with the kids, and family expeditions to the red dust and far horizons of outback Australia, including Kati Thanda/ Lake Eyre and walking around the base of Uluru, pushing our younger kid Leon in their pusher and so proud of our oldest kid John who at age four walked the whole way.

Ah the love one has for one’s children! That connection and bond that develops from nurturing new life, providing a safe cocoon to grow and thrive, Managing the exhaustion and frustration and being amazed and proud and just full of love and joy as they spread their wings and fly. And still waking up in the middle of the night worried about them when they are in their late twenties!

Penny had the courage to tell me about her struggles with her gender identity when we’d been together for 16 years. I had no inkling whatsoever. She had written me a letter that she gave me on going to bed one night. We talked all night. My biggest shock was that I thought I knew everything about her, and that she had managed to keep this secret for so long. I didn’t feel betrayed, just so surprised and amazed. And so sorry for her that she had felt she had had to keep this a secret for so long, because she was so worried about what it meant for us. 

She transitioned four years later. Those four years were tumultuous times when our love was tested. She had said that if her gender issues were going to threaten our relationship and our love, then she would stuff it all back in the box where it had been in her life up till then. It was after being out dancing with her one night with her in girl mode, that I told her that I found her attractive as Penny, that I could love her as Penny. After that her transition was unstoppable. 

With our ongoing love she blossomed. She was much happier, more outgoing, comfortable in her own skin. And I realised that I wasn’t heterosexual!

We went through a lot and our love grew deeper through it.

Penny was my rock when I was elected to the Senate, happy to semi retire to be by my side as I strode into life as a Senator, together making sense of this crazy hectic world. We were in touch every day whenever we were apart, supporting each other with love.

Our love was at the heart of the melodies, the harmonies, and the rhythms of our lives. Our love was a collaborative process, creating music together, forming a living repertoire to be drawn from and added to.

Our music came to an abrupt end when Penny passed away three and a half years ago. Unexpectedly. A sudden cardiac arrest when she was alone at our holiday house at Sisters Beach, on Tommeginne country in Lutrawita- Tasmania.

 I raised the alarm when I hadn’t heard from her, and it was our friend Colin, who has the house across the road from us, who found her, on the couch, computer on her lap, phone on the coffee table in front of her. 

It was Colin’s partner Sue who rang me. It was a parliament morning . Despite having reached out to Colin and Sue earlier on, I’d got to work, put my worries out of my mind, had been getting stuck into Bridget McKenzie in the Senate Chamber when Sue was trying to get back to me with the news. I rang Sue as I left the chamber. And collapsed in the corridor when she told me. I dragged myself up and to my office and collapsed again. My staff took over as my brain and my heart went into meltdown.

There’s a lot that’s blurry about the following months. What do I remember now?  Crying, and crying and crying. Enormous avalanches of tears and grief. Grief, the flip side of love. And the love of people around me. So much kindness. So much love. So much help. Having a life partner die like this in one of those things that you think you could never get through. I learnt that with love you can. 

I travelled back to Sisters Beach by myself a month after Penny died. I knew it was going to be hard. The house was so full of Penny. I was returning her paintings to the walls where they lived. Penny’s semi-retirement had enabled her to plunge into life as an artist. She painted landscapes, particularly forests, and used to say that when she painted a forest it was as if she was there. The power of deep connection and love.

I went on a walk while I was there, through coastal woodland to a wonderful cave where the spirit of the First Peoples of this land lives on. It was a walk that Penny and I had done many times before, and I was expecting to feel full of grief when I arrived. But when I sat at the mouth of the cave I felt a deep sense of peace and love. I felt connected with the birds, the plants, the animals, the spirits of this place. 

And I felt a deep sense of connection with Penny. I felt her love living on - that even though our relationship was over in a physical sense that she was still with me, that our love was a reservoir that I could continue to draw upon.

The music hadn’t quite stopped. Under my grief our love was a quiet powerful ostinato that helped to hold me. It was overwhelmed by dark persistent drumming for many months, but it was there. 

Our music is still there, but is now one suite of melodies, harmonies and rhythms amongst others. 

What I wasn’t expecting was that there has been a powerful gift associated with the diminuendo of the music of our love.

It has allowed me to hear more clearly the other music in my life. 

In my grief I was loved and held and nurtured by friends, family, colleagues and all of life around me.

I was able to hear more clearly the love of so many people and all of nature, love that I’d taken for granted and was in the background whilst the love between Penny and me was to the fore. 

I hear the love in every hug from my children, every visit to my Mum, every catch up with my friends, every time my staff ask how I’m going.

I hear the love when I say hello to a magpie as I pass on my bike, when I watch the sun set behind a sea of cloud, when I hug my favourite tree just down the street.

I hear the love when I walk through forest and marvel at bright red fungi and towering trees, when I dive through the waves at Sisters Beach and see tiny fish skittering away, when I lie on my back in prickly grass and and watch the yellow tailed black cockatoos wheel their way across the enormous blue sky.

And the power of that landscape of love in my life has allowed me to be open to offering my love to the world and to finding more love. 

Just over two years after Penny passed away I met Anne. We met the way most people do these days - online. On the lesbian dating site Pink Sofa. 

Anne lives in Canberra, where we met on 20 January last year. We had dinner together at iconic Tilley’s restaurant after the last day of hearings of the inquiry into the previous government’s proposed religious discrimination bill. I undoubtedly spent too much time over that first dinner debriefing about the homophobic and transphobic evidence from some of the witnesses that I’d just endured. 

Despite this we enjoyed each other's company and organised another date for two weeks later, the first sitting week of the year. She led me astray on that date on a trek through waist high grass in the wilds of Narrabundah as we took a shortcut to dinner. This was after a delightful walk bird watching in the Jerrabomberra wetlands so I forgave her very easily!

The next week was Senate Estimates which usually means not finishing till 11pm. However, I decided I could have Monday or Wednesday evening off. She texted back immediately to confirm Monday. Which was Valentine’s Day. We date our relationship from that night - a magic evening of a bike ride, a swim in Lake Burley Griffen and a gorgeous dinner.  We went out again on the Wednesday night of course.

I want to publicly say, happy anniversary Anne. I love you, mind and body and heart and soul. I want to be with you forever. We have decided we will need to live until we are 103 to fit in everything we want to do together. 

I think about how immense achieving marriage equality was. Penny and I were one of the very few same sex couples to have been married in Australia prior to December 2017. 

I think how societal and political support for same sex relationships and gender diverse people makes a huge difference. It means that young people can be secure in knowing they are loved for who they are as they grow up, that they don’t need to hide who they are, that they can be their full self in the world like I was able to be growing up and they can have that expectation that they will find love in their lives. 

And I think about the power of love that is interconnected with love for the whole of the world.

A year before I met Anne I wrote the following while flying out from Sydney over the  escarpment forests of the Illawarra.

Not only would I love to fall in love with these forests, these rivers, these craggy escarpments, but if I am to fall in love again with another person I want it to be a love that develops amongst our kith and kin in such a place.

I want to walk with my new beloved, amongst our beloveds. I want to camp overnight and cook a meal together as the sun sets and the sky gradually darkens to a deep deep night, a night filled with the screeching of owls, the grunts and growls of possums and wombats and bandicoots and the raucous breaking of branches and crashing through undergrowth of life being lived.

I want to tumble into a bed in a tent, snuggle up together in a down cocoon and be so tired, as we wrap our arms around each other, spoon our bodies together, tousle each other’s hair and giving each other a final good night kiss as we briefly relive the day. Then drift off to sleep, nestled together with each other and with all our other loves around us.

A new love that is supported and embraced by the love of the world will be a true love, a love that fits snuggled into our lives, a love that doesn’t try and compete with the love between Penny and me, nor try and fill the hole that her passing has left in me.

Anne and I did our first overnight walk together in Lutrawita- Tasmania in January, camping next to a lake near Cradle Mountain, felt deeply in love as the currawong calls echoed around us, as we watched mist form on the lake and gazed in awe at the reflections of the forest and mountains around us. The night wasn’t quite as romantic as I had envisioned- Anne had tripped on the walk up and had sustained a not insignificant cut above her eyebrow which didn’t help for a comfortable night's sleep! She ended up getting three stitches in it when we came down the next day…

I feel so blessed by the universe that Anne and I met and are now sharing such love and life together.

It is an incredible platform to engage with the world from. To feel empowered by, to pivot from and to offer and share that love and that power with others.

I know not everyone has had the good fortune to have a life so full of love as mine has been.

That’s a huge motivation for my work - to do what I can to help create structural and political and societal change to make it more likely that people, young and old can feel good about themselves and find love, community and support no matter their gender identity, sexuality or sex characteristics. 

And to help people connect with nature and to feel the love that surrounds them. If you love something you will want to protect it. And we must protect the web of life we are part of, because when we are destroying or damaging that life we are damaging ourselves. 

I am inspired and motivated by and grateful for First Nations knowledge and wisdom of this country. Our First Peoples know of course that each of us are interconnected with and supported by life and love past, present and future.

Love, that ‘elusive quality which reduces distance, creates connection and a sense of being as one’ in the words of poet Mark Tredinnick is so powerful.

I wish everyone all the very best in finding love, for yourself, your partner or partners, your family, your kids, your friends, your community. and that we can all feel the love, forming a web, part of the web of life that we are all part of. Let your loved ones know you love them, and know that all of life loves you back.