Diane Townsend (nee Gross)
Wiped off the map as if it never existed

I’m now 59 years old, and with my family, we arrived here in November 1977, almost 30 years ago. We had been living in a tiny country town called Batlow, in a Department of Housing house, but desperately wanted to come back to Sydney… Minto was where we were placed, myself, my husband and five children.

My memories on first seeing our future home was wondering where it started and were it ended. I had notified the Department of Housing of my intention to inspect the house, but found after a trip of 600 kilometres, that they didn’t have the key! I couldn’t understand the concept of what I was seeing and only found out much later we had a ‘back-to-front’ house.

The day we arrived was a nightmare. We’d come by mail train from Cootamundra, a friend having driven us there from Batlow. There was no air conditioning; it was as hot as Hades! The kids were wearing tracksuits and almost had to strip, there was no water either and the carriage was full of soot from the steam engine.

I was having a lot of problems with my husband. He has paranoid schizophrenia and couldn’t hold down a job, so I went to work at the new Campbelltown Hospital. We weren’t allowed to speak to the neighbours and the children weren’t allowed to play with other children. I was only allowed to go to work and if I tried to speak to anyone when he was near, I could expect violence. So we were very isolated and seen as snobs.

Eventually in 1985, I snapped and ended up in hospital for nearly a year, and we finally separated. It’s been a long haul back through the years of depression for me.

I’m Australian-born and grew up in a country town. I came to Sydney when I was 17, to train as a nurse at Prince Henry Hospital. We always joked that I met [my husband] in bed. He came to Australia in 1966. He’s an Austrian and was knocked down by a car six weeks after arriving in Sydney and so I met him in hospital. When we started going out, he showed what a real romantic he was by singing me German love songs by the fountain of Diana in Hyde Park.

He actually had started a job when we first moved here, but quickly left it. He was very paranoid and believed his tools were being interfered with. He was a toolmaker, but he never again had a job. I loved my job, but eventually reached burnout and came to a grinding halt. Things were even more difficult after that. Because I always protected him and made excuses for him, I was seen as the ‘psycho’ in the neighbourhood, and I was the one who spent time in a psychiatric hospital. Thus I became the ‘Mad Woman of Minto’.

I knew what was wrong with him but because he was physically healthy, he never saw a doctor. So I went to see Dr Kumar, the local GP here, explained the situation to him and told him I’d get my husband to bring the kids to him on the pretext that I was working and couldn’t sort it out. About three months later, he contacted me and said, “You’re right, Dianne,” so that was the first step in getting help.

I became pretty much an outcast in the neighbourhood but not at the school. I was down at the school constantly, rather than be here with him. Even while I was pregnant with our sixth child, when I wasn’t at work, I was at the school. All the kids at school took great interest in the baby, both before and after she was born.

These days I am the only member of my family living here and the only original resident in the street.

When they started knocking down Valley Vista, a very few people knew what was happening. A lot of us believed it was because of the white ant problem. Then it was revealed that the intention was to destroy our community, and no one really believed it. How could such a thing happen? I didn’t believe it and am still trying to come to terms with it.

It was, and still is, a terrible shock that our community can simply be wiped off the map, as if it never existed. This is a community, not just a collection of houses. We call these houses our homes. We’ve raised our families here, seen joy and sorrow, watched this place called Minto become a real Community. Now we are losing it all, and that is the greatest tragedy.