NORM Morris could talk all day about his life in Inverell. From Oliver Street’s smelly reputation thanks to the horses of Byron Street businesses, to his grandfather’s sunken garden where Victoria Park now stands, Norm has a story for almost every location in town.
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Norm’s father had a bootmaking business on Otho street in the 40s. Norm began a milk run from their farm, and by age 17, was on the board of directors for the local pasteurized milk company.
Norm’s wife Jean was also local. Their mothers nursed them side by side in church, and one day a curious Norm poked her.
“She said so everybody could hear, ‘Mummy, that boy touched me!’ and my mother said to hers, ‘Do you think she’ll always object?’”
When Norm re-met Jean as an adult, he knew she was the one.
“I just made up my mind when I met her, that whenever she was single, I would be! But she made me wait, I had to wait something like 15 years”.
Norm became a minister and eventually settled in Queensland. He wrote a weekly church column called ‘real life lessons’, many based on his memories of Inverell. His daughter Helen turned the articles into a book.
He told one story about his uncles playing a prank on a visitor to town.
“A new city bloke came along with a nice flash horse,” he said. His uncles tricked the man by painting the chestnut horse with whitewash.
“It teaches you can’t judge a book by its cover! If he was a country boy and he knew what sort of horse he was looking for, he’d know, wouldn’t he? And you can’t judge people just by what they look on the outside, can you?”
Not every lesson Norm taught his children can be told as a fun anecdote. On September 9 last year, his beloved wife Jean passed away following a car accident caused by a drunk and stoned driver. Norm was in the car and was severely injured himself. He ended up on a feeding tube for several months, attending the funeral in a wheelchair.
The headlines read “children forgive mother’s killer,” he said. Despite the temptation to live in bitterness and despair following the tragedy, Norm chose to focus instead on his love for his wife. He was proud of his children for the difficult stand they made.
“I was very fortunate, and wonderfully blessed. She was a wonderful wife and mother”.
Helen Brown’s book, ‘Reflections: Australian stories from my father’s past’, will be launched at 10am in the Inverell library on Saturday, October 24.
