An Overview

Memoir by talented Lech Blaine about his working class parents and the family they nurtured, which was targeted by a hateful man, Michael Shelley, whose neglected children were taken from him and placed with the Blaine couple. It’s a battle between the gods of good and evil.

I have placed the Goodreads image of the book (above) on its side as a wink to the themes of reversals and irony that the book promotes.

Baby Boomers

“Baby Boomers”, of which I am one, might warm to this book because of its familiar themes. I was drawn to the Australian references, firstly to a famous person from my background — actress Jackie Weaver — as well as to North Shore suburbs I’d first stayed in as a naive teenager coming to Sydney from the country. In fact, Jackie Weaver in the Prologue begins the story with her teenage romantic connection to one of the protagonists, the antihero and religious extremist, Michael Shelley.

Irony

The title “Australian Gospel” is ironic, since the “mad monk” Shelley displays such negative behaviour throughout the narrative, that it is reminiscent of the work of the devil rather than that of angels. And the true heroes of the book are Tom and Lenore Blaine, an Australian working class couple, overweight (especially Tom), but who pour unflinching love on their fostered children. Lenore is the natural nurturer and Tom supports the family financially and guides them through his love of Aussie values, including sport and the great outdoors.

Department of Child Safety (DOCS)

Another connection for me was the theme of Foster Children. My son brought up several fostered children with his ex-wife. Being a natural with children, Joel, like Lenore, was the the main nurturer in the family, at least in terms of love, pure and simple. Also like Lenore, he enjoyed the children when they were small and continued to love and support them throughout adolescence, even though his marriage had fallen through. The children have remained a part of him in a close-knit family unit, all boasting successful jobs and expressing continuing love for one another.

This memoir springs from journalistic research (author Lech Blaine’s) and strong evidence established by Foster Care files and the copious reports by the principal carer and natural nurturer, Lenore Blaine.

A Family Saga

This story is in part a family saga with an overarching “black comedy” theme of disasters wrought by the actions of Michael Shelley, a madman who preaches religion, while committing emotional atrocities and leaving damage behind him wherever he goes.

Lenore, backed up by her sports mad, salt-of-the-earth husband, is the best foster carer a child could ask for. She isn’t in it for the money. She does it for the love of it and DOCS knows this, giving her some of the most difficult children, including four of the Shelleys’ non-thriving offspring. Even these deprived kids blossom in this non-controlling yet loving atmosphere. One of the examples of Lenore’s unconditional love is when she says to one of her fostered children: ‘I don’t care if you wet your bed forever, I will still love you until I die.’ Afterwards, that little child, despite her grimly tragic prognosis, never wets the bed ever again.

A Religious Fanatic

On the other side you have the mad monk, Michael Shelley, whom we are asked to accord a degree of sympathy in the beginning, by the fact of his being loved and then dumped, by the actress Jackie Weaver in their youth. However this quickly turns to nought as he continues to wreak havoc on the good family and others by his vile antics undertaken in the name of Christian dogmatic principles.

The irony is that Tom and Lenore, the sports loving, salt-of-the-earth couple, represent everything that Michael rails against, and yet it is they who are given the Shelley children to raise.

Michael and his long suffering wife Mary kidnap one of the children taken from them, which act leaves an everlasting deep scar on the child who eventually suicides, the only one of the fostered children not to thrive.